


Testing the Waters

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, The Sentinel Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 15:46:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Sentinel Too, Jim gets antsy about Blair's obfuscations about where he's going once a week.  Written for 2011 TS Secret Santa</p>
            </blockquote>





	Testing the Waters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [carodee (Caro_Dee)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caro_Dee/gifts).



> I wrote this for the TS Secret Santa community, and my recipient was Caro Dee. Many thanks to Ainm for organising the community contributors. Thank you to Psychgirl for beta.

Testing the Waters

Jim leaned back on his couch and watched as Blair headed for the door. Third Thursday in a row, except for the time that Blair went out on a Friday when the previous Thursday had been spent on a stakeout.

“When am I going to meet her?” Jim asked. “Any relationship that lasts this long for you, you must be just about ready to marry her.”

Blair paused, chuckling. “Me and marriage? Not with anyone I know right now. Probably not ever.” Blair grimaced at the thought. “ It’s just a friend. Chill on the matchmaking, man.”

“I wouldn’t presume,” Jim said and turned his head away to pretend to watch ESPN. “Go on, then. I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah, bye.” The door shut behind Blair, and Jim followed his footsteps down the hall, down the stairs, out the tiny lobby. Solid, sure footsteps. Alive footsteps. Jim sighed.

Wouldn’t presume. Jim wouldn’t presume to match-make, but Blair’s Thursday nights out were beginning to rub something raw. Blair didn’t say much, just ‘going out, see ya later’. Blair was less forthcoming these days, after Alex and after Ventriss. So Jim didn’t presume, but the way that Blair came home after those Thursday nights freshly shampooed and showered itched in the back of his head, because he couldn’t figure it out. He couldn’t figure it out and he didn’t want to ask, precisely because Blair hadn’t said a thing. He didn’t take a gym bag or sports gear. He didn’t tell tall tales about some weird germophobe friend who insisted that Blair only pass his door freshly washed and dressed in a paper gown. Not a clue, except for those regular weekly disappearances, and the returns smelling of different shampoo and soap.

It was starting to piss Jim off, and worry him. Blair was keeping secrets, and Jim remembered how well it all turned out the last time that Blair kept secrets. Restless, he stood and walked out to his balcony. The wind blew cold off the sound, hinting at the winter chill coming. The tail end of the year was getting closer, and Jim could hardly wait, because this year hadn’t exactly been sterling. There was a thin line of traffic beyond the parking lot below; white headlights and red taillights, people going places, Blair among them. Jim clenched the hand resting on the balcony rail. If it was good enough for Blair and Simon to follow him and stick their noses where they didn’t belong that time, it was certainly good enough for Jim Ellison now.

The next Thursday, Jim checked that Blair was going out again, (“Off to see the mystery woman, Chief?”), ignored Blair’s eye-rolling response, and casually said that he’d visit the gym that night.

“Yeah, sure, have fun getting ripped,” Blair said, and waved a hand in vague goodbye on his way out the door. Jim knew Blair’s schedule pretty well, and following the Volvo didn’t need any fancy sentinel senses, just old-fashioned skill. The Volvo headed for Port Hill, a suburb that wasn’t ritzy but was still solid; stolid, even, and not somewhere that Jim could easily associate with Blair. People here might donate to Greenpeace from the comfort of leather sofas, but they didn’t chain themselves to redwoods.

Blair parked outside a representative sample of Port Hill architecture, a rambling brick neo-colonial, and walked around the back. It was dark, and the dull streetlight glow wasn’t much, but Jim could see the hunched shoulders and the frown. He’d pulled up a way down the street, and he’d turned his lights off even before he’d parked. Then, perfectly well aware that Blair would kill him if he knew what he was doing, Jim got out of the truck and walked briskly up the sidewalk and in Blair’s wake, past the brick house, through well tended gardens. The leaves were yellowing, but if any had dropped on the ground recently they’d been removed before they could mar the immaculate turf and topiary.

He turned a corner but didn’t squint against the sudden burst of light, warned by the diffused radiance that it cast. There was a long, low extension to the house, with walls of glass rather than windows. Someone had spent a lot of money installing a substantial swimming pool here in the middle of comfortable suburbia. The windows were fogged with condensation from the heated water. Jim pursed his lips in quiet surprise and wondered how much the king or queen of this suburban castle paid in utilities.

He hovered at the far corner of the pool house. He could see in, but he wasn’t framed in the light or easily visible to anyone inside. He could hear Blair in a small room at the far end. He was alone and, by the sound of it, undressing. Jim felt confused, and vaguely cheated. This was the big secret? That Blair went swimming?

Apparently so. Blair came out, dressed in old blue swim trunks. Jim pressed harder against the narrow line of brick wall, even though he couldn’t hear anyone else inside besides Blair. He ought to go now; but he didn’t.

Blair didn’t dive in. Instead, he sat on the edge and eased himself into the water. Jim watched, uncertain why this held so much fascination for him. Blair could be shy, but he wasn’t that shy. Jim had seen this – Blair in shorts, Blair’s chest with its fine mat of hair, the square shoulders and broad back. But it was different, watching when Blair wasn’t aware, and Jim swallowed. Blair’s heart was hammering, he realised, and then Blair slowly dipped his head under the water and lifted it just as slowly. He scraped the wet hair away from his face and took a deep breath, in and out. With that, Blair pushed off from the side and began a steady crawl up and down the pool. Arms up and over, head turning rhythmically, a breath of air in, that breath bubbling out into the water, a breath in, a breath out.

The chlorine smell hit Jim hard, tightening the membranes of his nose and making his eyes tear. The fountain outside Hargrove hadn’t smelled anywhere near as chemical. “Ah, Chief.” It was almost soundless, barely even breathed, but his mouth shaped the words.

Blair swam for maybe twenty minutes, and Jim excused his continued presence with the rationalisation that people shouldn’t swim alone. Forget about the times that Jim had gloried in solitary risks in surf. This was different. Finally, Blair finished, leaning his back against the side of the pool, his chest heaving for breath, his face flushed with effort. He stood and took a couple of dragging steps further into the water and let the water hold him up once more, lying face down, his arms and legs starfished out, his hair spreading out in a dark aureole around him. Jim caught his breath, and waited. Waited for Blair to lift himself out of the water, to stand on his feet, to take a breath.

Blair stayed where he was, his face beneath the surface, while Jim counted off the time by the pulse of Blair’s heart, a long, distressed count that broke both Jim’s patience and his stealth. He shoved a sliding door open and strode inside. Blair’s dead man’s float had brought him to the edge of the pool and Jim acted without a single thought other than that he wanted Blair _out_ of the water. He snagged Blair’s wrist and hauled him up, shouting, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

There was an ungainly struggle to get a coughing Blair onto the side of the pool where he rested on his hands and knees for a moment, his body and hair streaming with water, before he surged to his feet and took one good swing at Jim’s jaw. “Motherfucker!” Blair roared, and Jim went down on his ass. Blair stared at him, gasping for breath again, before he turned on his heel without another word and stalked to the small changing room, the muscles of his back rigid. Jim stared after him, one hand nursing his aching face.

A cold draft sliced through the air, chilling the back of Jim’s neck. He stood, and shut the door behind him. There was a long wooden bench by the side of the pool. The dark, oiled finish probably had some fancy name, but Jim didn’t care about that. He sat down heavily, and shut his eyes against his folly. He waited through the noise of Blair’s shower and the once-a-week-familiar smell of shampoo and soap different to the ones at home (but still chosen by Blair – something about the scent notes confirmed it). He waited through the rustle of clothes being put on, and the electric whine of a hair-dryer. Then there was the sound of footsteps. They stopped about three feet from Jim, and he straightened to look Blair in the face.

Blair stood with his arms crossed. “Let me throw out a quote here, Jim. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’”

“I was worried about you.” Which was close enough to both truth and lie to make Jim feel like squirming.

Blair spread his hands as if expecting answers to drop down from the skies, since he obviously wasn’t impressed with what he was getting from James Ellison.

“You were - worried? And it didn’t occur to you to, maybe, I don’t know, _talk_ to me, instead of fucking _stalking_ me and nearly scaring the shit out of me?”

“I did ask you, and you kept me giving me bullshit.”

But you weren’t asking seriously, man,” Blair retorted.

“I didn’t used to have to ask _seriously_.” Even in his current red light state of humiliation, Jim knew exactly how pathetic that sounded.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Blair slumped onto the bench beside Jim. There was silence for while. Then Blair drew himself up and turned towards Jim with a determined expression. “Tell me, in very simple words, what you think I’m doing here.”

Instead of wafting around the humid air, that cold draft seemed to drift somewhere inside Jim’s chest. He gritted his jaw, which hurt. “Processing. I get it, Sandburg.”

“Good. And is that something to be worried about?”

“You tell me,” Jim snapped. “How’s your breath control going?”

Blair’s forefingers rubbed over his lips, the way he did sometimes when his brain got busy with speculation. “Pretty damn good, actually,” he said. “How’s _your_ processing going?”

Jim looked away. “Fine.”

Blair sighed. “Jim. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t deal with your processing as well as mine. You get me?”

“I get you.” Jim gathered some courage and looked at Blair, looked him in the face so that Blair could look back. “You’re – okay? Things are working out? You mentioned that counsellor at the U, a while back.”

Blair smiled. It was rueful, but it was a smile. “Things are okay.”

“Good. That’s good, Chief.”

Blair sighed again. “I should kick your ass.”

Jim shrugged. “Yeah. You probably should.”

Blair laughed, a rasping chuckle. “Why the hell can’t I stay pissed at you?”

“I don’t know. You don’t generally stay angry at anyone. I don’t see how that makes me special.” Jim could have bitten his tongue. He hadn’t meant that to come out like the way it sounded - needy, and fishing for reassurance.

Blair shook his head. “Oh you’re special, all right, trust me on that.” Jim narrowed his eyes, unsure of how to take that, in part because Blair didn’t sound as if he quite knew what to make of it either. “And - uh – I’m sorry that I socked you one. Do you want some ice?” There was a note of consternation in Blair’s voice, as if he’d just remembered that, yes, he had punched Jim in the jaw.

“I’m good, Sandburg. Don’t worry about it.” They looked at each other. “Why didn’t you tell me? Just a simple, ‘Jim, I’m going swimming, man, don’t wait up’?”

Blair stood. “I don’t know. What happened...it was a big deal, right?”

Alex, the fountain, Sierra Verde – a big deal? Sandburg had a gift for understatement. “That’s one way of describing it.” Jim stayed where he was, watching as Blair began to pace slowly.

“For both of us – scary, but pretty amazing, right?”

Jim nodded. Amazing? If Blair said so.

“What I mean is that - it was something big for you too.”

The fumbling grew too much for Jim. “And what? You didn’t want to bother me?”

Blair looked shamefaced. “Something like that.”

Jim knew that there was a thin line between not wanting to bother someone, and not wanting to be bothered with them. If it was the second, he knew whose fault that was.

“Chief....”

“Yeah, I know.” What exactly Blair knew went unsaid.

“I’m sorry,” Jim said. His hand gestured at the pool.

“Hey, no problemo. I know I was being kinda weird about it in retrospect.”

“So how long do you think you’ll need to - go swimming?”

“I don’t know. A while.”

“You want any company?” Blair’s heartbeat had seemed so loud to Jim earlier. Nowhere near as loud as his own sounded now.

Blair paused in his pacing, a surprised look on his face that turned to an uncertain smile. “Maybe not every time. But sometimes? But only if you won’t freak out when I do the float thing.” The smile was gone again.

“I won’t be surprised next time.” Jim stood. “Why would you want to do that, Chief? Why?”

Blair held out a hand, gesturing Jim towards the door. “I don’t know. I mean, yes, I do know on one level.” They began walking. “Facing fears, reclaiming something hurtful as a personal rite, symbolism.” He smiled with a sly insinuation that made Jim uncomfortable. “All the usual bullshit, right?”

“If it works for you,” Jim said, already regretting the offer to accompany Blair, but determined not to show it. If Blair could do his ‘float thing’ then Jim could surely watch it.

“Yeah, seems to.” They walked outside, and Blair shut and locked the sliding door behind them.

“Then you should do it.”

It was cold outside after the steamy heat of the pool, and Blair turned his collar up. “God, winter’s coming, and you know how fond I am of winter.”

Jim smiled. “Yep, you just love that cold weather.” Blair flipped him off, but it was light-hearted. The confused rage of that punch was gone like it had never been, burned out in a flash of action, _processed_ and done with. Jim was equally willing to forget about the way his jaw ached when he spoke. There was only one question left and Jim waved behind him at the house. “Whose place is this, anyway?”

“It’s Eli’s. Eli Stoddard?”

“Yeah, I remember.” Eli Stoddard, who just happened to be Blair’s mentor. Something unreasoning and unfair prodded Jim’s chest, but he ignored it. “Rainier pays well.”

Blair grinned at that. “It may not just be tenure. Eli has books published, and I think that there’s money in the family somewhere. Either that or he reckons the pool is a good blind for the marijuana hothouse in the cellar. That’s a joke, by the way.”

Jim did something he hadn’t done for a while. He reached out and tousled Blair’s freshly washed hair. “I’m glad you told me that,” he said earnestly. “It’s hard to tell with you sometimes.”

“Fuck you, Jim,” Blair said, with perfect ease. He stopped by his car. “See you back at the loft? Or are you going to go to the gym now?”

Jim averted his face before he could catch himself. “Figured I’d go back home,” he admitted.

“See you there, then.”

The next Thursday, Jim offered to come, but Blair said no. But at least he smiled when he said it.


End file.
